1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a zoom lens system, and more particularly to a zoom lens system with an improved focusing system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In this field of art, various focusing systems have been developed for a zoom lens system, in which the most conventional one is the so-called front group focusing system to locate the focusing lens group at the front of the lens system and shift it along the optical axis. This front group focusing is popularly adopted to most of the zoom lens systems since the shifting distance of the focusing lens group to focus an identical photographic distance is substantially unchanged throughout the whole zoom range.
The front group focusing is, however, unfavorable to a wide angle zoom lens system due to the refractive power and the necessary shifting distance of the focusing lens group. In such a wide angle zoom lens system, accordingly, it is necessary to adopt another focusing system, such as a whole lens system focusing to shift the entire lens system, or the internal group focusing to shift an internal lens group within the lens system, or the rear group focusing to shift the rearmost lens group of the lens system.
In these focusing systems other than the front group focusing system, however, the shifting distance necessary to focus an identical object distance is changed in dependence on the change in the focal length within the zoom range, i.e., the shifting distance should be increased in accordance with the increase in the focal length even if the object distance is maintained. In the whole lens system focusing, for example, the ratio of the shifting distance for focusing at the longest focal length position to that at the shortest focal length position is even the square of the zoom ratio.
Thus, these focusing systems inevitably necessitate a lens barrel mechanism with an additional complexity in that some mechanical means is required for compensating such a difference in the shifting distance in automatic response to the change in the focal length. Although the compensation of the difference in the shifting distance may be alternatively carried out by an electric means to avoid such a mechanical complexity in an automatic focusing system in which the control of the shifting distance is responsive to an electric signal, an excessive difference in the shifting distance would be still unfavorable to such an electric means in view of the rapidity of focusing, driving energy for focusing, and the necessary space to be left for shifting the focusing lens group.
Further, especially in a zoom lens system with a relatively great zoom ratio covering a wide field angle range, an available focusing system is limited.